As Castro steps down, man remembers dictator's rise

Sunday

Feb 24, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 24, 2008 at 8:41 AM

Al Grabow awoke to the sounds of fireworks, honking car horns and shouting in the streets outside his Havana, Cuba hotel. He figured it was just the locals still celebrating from the night before and went back to sleep. It was New Year’s Day, 1959.

Wes Franklin

Al Grabow awoke to the sounds of fireworks, honking car horns and shouting in the streets outside his Havana, Cuba hotel.

He figured it was just the locals still celebrating from the night before and went back to sleep.

It was New Year’s Day, 1959.

Only later did he learn from hotel staff that the Batista government had collapsed and a young revolutionary by the name of Fidel Castro was at that moment leading his guerilla force toward Havana to seize control. Mounting audible cries of “Batista, èl se fue! (he left)” from more and more exited Cubans gathering in the streets only seemed to garnish what was already known.

Two days later, paramilitary rebel units began to roll into the capital city. For the next two weeks, Grabow was stuck on the politically turbulent island, with all scheduled flights out canceled. When the airlines finally began to load up American and other foreign evacuees, it was without regard to printed ticket destination. As a single man with no family, Grabow found himself at the bottom of the list.

Fast-forward almost 50 years. Grabow, now a part-time geography instructor at Crowder College, again awoke to news from Cuba, albeit indirectly this time. Last week, Castro announced he was stepping down as president, ending his long dictatorship over the island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Grabow had personally witnessed the beginning. In his eyes, the ending seemed far less dramatic.

That’s not to say he, like many others, wasn’t caught a little off guard by Castro’s move.

“I was very surprised,” Grabow said. “I never thought he would leave his position unless he died. But when he announced his retirement, I was very surprised. I never would have expected that.”

Especially, perhaps, after what he saw in 1959.

A high school job and an airline strike are what indirectly placed Grabow in Havana during some very turbulent days that were to impact the world.

Grabow was 18 years old and a college freshman when he went home for Christmas break and bumped into an old acquaintance at a party.

The man had headed up the circulation department at a suburban Chicago newspaper Grabow had worked for in high school. He told Grabow how an airline strike had canceled all flights out of Chicago, and pretty much everywhere else, to Havana, where he had planned to spend 10 days or so during the holidays. The nearest flights were out of New Orleans.

He asked if Grabow wanted to drive with him there, splitting expenses, and then fly to Havana for vacation.

Grabow said sure, why not?

The two arrived in Havana the day after Christmas, 1958.

For the next six days, they hit the town, visiting casinos and bars and generally just having a good time. Grabow remembered pre-revolution Havana as “a cross between Las Vegas and Tijuana.”

It was America’s playground, he said.

That changed immediately on New Year’s Day, when the ruling Batista government fell. Contrasting Grabow’s previous six days in Havana to the next 14 or so was like “day and night,” he said.

Casinos he had frequented just the evening before were now gutted, the slot machines smashed open for the coins inside. No one seemed to know what was going to happen. Chaos reigned.

Castro’s rebels soon began entering Havana in modified military vehicles — pickup trucks with machine guns mounted on the bed, with six or eight bearded guerilla fighters standing in the back, shaking rifles in the air.

Still, Grabow wasn’t really scared. When he found out the airport was shut down to block Batista government officials from escaping and that he wouldn’t be leaving the disordered country any time soon, he just shrugged and ordered another daiquiri.

“If it were me right now, I would be utterly terrorized!” Grabow said. “But when you’re 18 years old, you have a certain bravado. That slowly goes away as you get older.”

There was one instance, though, when Grabow admitted he did start to get a little afraid.

The hotels soon ran out of food as the refugees piled up and guests were allowed, for a dollar, to eat with the military — Castro’s hardened revolutionaries. While in chow line, Grabow somehow offended one of the armed rebels, who got in the American’s face and was growing more and more agitated.

The conflict was on the verge of getting violent, when the soldier was pulled away by some of his comrades.

“I was trying to be ‘nice’ too — yeah, I was scared then!” Grabow said, laughing. “I was too smart not to be!”

After a few days of being trapped in Havana, Grabow tried to visit the American Embassy for instruction. There, however, he found droves of his countrymen crowded in front of the embassy for the same purpose. The gates were locked.

“That was enraging a lot of people — to struggle for 30 minutes to get up to the American Embassy only to see this huge gate locked,” Grabow recalled. “But in reality, what would they have accomplished by opening the gate? I can understand things better now.”

When the airlines were finally allowed to fly people out, it was in a stock car mode, with passengers piled into every available seat no matter their destination — or the plane’s. That could be sorted out later. It was women and children first. Then men with families. Grabow and his traveling companion were among some of the last to get out, flying British Airways back to the states.

Then around Christmastime 2002, Grabow returned as part of an educational trip. Under normal conditions, Americans can’t legally visit Cuba as tourists because of the long-standing embargo.

He said he wanted to see if Havana had changed any from the time he left as a young man in 1959 — a young man confused about what had just happened around him.

The city, he said, was exactly as it was then.

Just as on the first trip, Grabow was there on New Year’s Day, the anniversary of the fall of the Batista government. And just as then, the Cubans celebrated with fireworks, honking car horns and shouts. It was like stepping back in time, Grabow said.

The fact that he was witness to Castro’s grasping of power doesn’t much change Grabow’s political opinion regarding the former dictator. That is, he doesn’t really have one.

Sure, he speculates about what will happen now — which is nothing, he guessed, in the short run. But as far as the right or wrong of events, social systems or world politics, Grabow leaves that to others.

“The world is going by, and we’re all on a raft on a river watching it pass,” he said. “Some people are trying to paddle the raft in the direction they want it to go. Others are just watching to see the way it goes. I’m one of those who are watching.”